Enabling Communities to integrate Earth, Space and Environmental Data -
Australian Location Index
Abstract
Location can be described and used to spatially integrate and enable
data in a number of different ways. In 2018, the Location Index (LOC-I)
project was initiated to bring together a number of government agencies
aiming to build a framework to support critical government decision
making and to contribute significantly to economic, social and
environmental sustainability by linking foundation spatial data with
observational data and providing a consistent way for seamless
integration of data on people, business, and the environment. This GIS
without GIS framework brings together modern technological approaches of
Linked Data and Discrete Global Grid Systems (DGGS) as well as important
aspects of Social Architecture to ensure relevance, transparency,
openness and accessibility of multidisciplinary data for the Australian
Government and non-government users. Using this approach, the Loc-I
program aims to open a substantial opportunity to all stakeholders by
providing a richer set of information to deliver better citizen-centric
services, more efficient programs and improved policy advice. Through
disseminating new capabilities across Commonwealth agencies, Loc-I
objective is to provide users with: stable, persistent and repeatable
access to the data increased interoperability with other datasets
enhanced information sharing and a greater number of users and re-uses
of the data reduced complexity in using of the data standardised
governance of data and information and transparency in data management
improved efficiency by reduced cost and time in collection, management
and delivery governed and managed federated supply chains The Loc-I is
looking at extending collaboration by introducing new use cases. A case
study was developed to integrate satellite raster data (big data) with
vector attribute data (little data). Using Digital Earth Australia Water
Observations from Space (WOfS) and Australia Surface hydrology datasets,
Geoscience Australia tested how to assign named waterbodies to WOfS
giving attribution context to raster information through DGGS.